If You Got Lost Using Apple Maps, Tim Cook is Sorry

Yesterday, I upgraded my Apple iPad and iPhone to iOS 6. Lucky for me, I didn’t leave the house after that or I might not have made it back to chat with you this morning.

As you may have heard, Apple’s new mapping system, the one they installed to replace Google Maps, doesn’t work quite right. Some of the results are amusing, like the bridge in this screengrab. The General Lee might make it across, but the rest of us are going to have issues.

Other reports include buildings in the wrong place, missing rivers, entire cities moved to a new state, parks five times their actual size and have a look at this incredible melting roadway.

All of this is pretty amusing if you’re sitting at home viewing it on your computer. If you’re out on the road, depending on the wonderful, new turn-by-turn audio directions, then it’s not so funny. People are getting lost. They’re missing appointments, maybe flights, hopefully no one has driven off the road into danger but it could happen.

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

Sorry is good, but you have to wonder how they managed to mess it up so badly in the first place, and why they released it anyway in the second place? Didn’t someone at Apple test this product? They built it from scratch, so they had to know there was a high probability of glitches. If it was a couple of bad pages spread out all over the world, I’d say okay, they missed a spot. But there are a lot of errors, many in very common places such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Washington Monument. Did the developers test the maps only in their own neighborhood? Has anyone checked to see if those are right?

So what now? Apple says they’re working on fixing the issues and they appreciate all the feedback (yeah, I’ll bet.) In the meantime, they suggest you download some other mapping software from the App Store such as Bing, MapQuest and Waze.

Now here’s the part that really hurts:

Or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app.

Yes, that’s Apple suggesting you use Google Maps until they fix theirs. That’s funnier than the bridge to nowhere.

Word of warning: if you’re an Apple user and you’re going out on a road trip this weekend, bring along an old fashioned, accordion folded map. It could be a life saver.